What we know about Roman Male Chastity and Infibulation

The evidence for Roman Male Chastity devices, and how and why they were used

From Roman Scandals, a pre-Code Hollywood Musical

Happy Christmas! As I approach the three-year milestone for (near) permanent chastity, my thoughts turn to my unfortunate brethren of days gone by, the Ancient Roman slaves who were truly trapped in permanent chastity… because, believe it or not, there is some good evidence that they and Roman male chastity devices existed.

This article is free to paid subscribers, but will unlock on the 1st of January for everybody else.

Get what Martial, the 1st century Roman poet wrote:

Your slave goes into the bath with you, Caelia, covered with a brass sheath (theca): to what purpose, pray, since he is not a singer to the lyre or flute? I suppose you don’t want to see his cock. Then why do you bathe in public? Are we all eunuchs in your eyes? So, to avoid appearing to grudge us, unfasten your slave’s sheath (fibula), Caelia

Martial, Epigram 11.75 (SMH)

OK, so you have to imagine this taking place in the public baths, the steamy — literally — egalitarian institution where everybody in Ancient Roman society got naked and had a good soak, a swim, a steam, a cold plunge, and a massage, possibly with a happy ending.

Think, Turkish baths meet high-end sports centre, but with more co-ed nudity and prostitution…

Wikimedia

No nudity for Caelia’s poor slave, though! He’s wearing a something called a theca or fibula.

Martial also gives us Menophilus who is not a slave. However, he’s wearing a fibula to hide his circumcision — regarded by the Romans as shameful.

So large a sheath (fibula) covers Menophilus’ penis that it would be enough by itself for all our comic actors. I had supposed (we often bathe together) that he was anxious to spare his voice, Flaccus. But while he was in a game in the middle of the sports ground with everybody watching, the sheath (fibula) slipped off the poor soul; he was circumcised.

Martial, Epigram 7.82 (SMH - for my two main sources, see Sources, below.)

What’s a fibula? (More about male infibulation than you wanted to know)

Here’s a page from obscure book by Pignorius, a 16th century antiquarian, showing his sketches of Roman “fibulae”:

Various fibulae by Pignorius.

Yes, fibula generally just means a boring old broach of the kind you use to pin a cloak. However, it can also very specifically refer to the closure device used in male infibulation.

Male infibulation is a well-documented ancient procedure. The foreskin is carefully pierced then pinned in order to induce an artificial phimosis… meaning the victim can’t withdraw his foreskin.

The end result turns the man’s foreskin into a sort of chastity device. A proper erection becomes impossible, as does sex. It also, supposedly, prevents masturbation.

For example, here are some naked Roman musicians:

Dingwall Fig 1.

The man on the right is definitely infibulated and that’s probably what a penis fibula looked like… similar to that pair of rings middle right in the Pignorius illustration:

So, normally, when classical scholars refer to infibulation and fibulae, they mean just that.

As well as being barbaric, this seems like a horrendously unhygienic practice. However, it has a long history and survived as an anti-masturbation practice well past 1900 - the Victorians were weird!

Of more interest to us, the fibula can also refer to a sheath that hid the penis.

Not only is Caelia’s slave’s genital installation referred to as both a fibula and a theca, but more tellingly a simple ring or closure wouldn’t have hidden his massive cock.

Then we have embarrassed Menophilus who was trying to hide the fact he just didn’t have a foreskin. A ring or pin wouldn’t have done him any good, because no foreskin (duh). Nor would it make sense for the poet to tease him about the size of a ring.

So, to the Romans:

a fibula is any device that keeps the penis in check.

Tertullian, the late 1st-centuy Christian author uses the term fibula as a figure of speech:

to loosen the buckle (fibula) even for voluntary offenses

Tertullian (Dingwall)

And gloating over the end of an “old” man’s sex life:

…he became sixty-year-old, and the law of Papias put a pin (fibula) on him

Tertullian. (Dingwall)

He maybe also uses it semi-literally in the same way we might refer to “getting into a woman’s knickers”:

Who does not know that the buckle (fibula) of the good man was loosened unwillingly, so that he might meet the fornicator

Tertullian. (Dingwall)

They weren’t 100% popular. From the Priapea, a collection of poems dedicated to Priapus, who’s basically the dick god:

Don't put a pin (fibula) on it

( Dingwall)

We’ll get to why shortly - it was more than about kink or keeping the victim horny - but first we want to take a closer look at the mysterious theca…

What did a theca look like?

Only one of Pignorius’s fibulas looks remotely like a penis sheath:

Pignorius’ Theca?

Yes, it could be a flat broach, however, those ribs and the nose are drawn as curved. It does look like a tube.

It’s hard to take this at face value. OK, maybe the spike is there to prevent the wearer having sex (ouch). However, the Romans were more worried about people being penetrated than doing the penetration. Why would they care?

To me, the image invites the speculation that it’s based on a garbled sketch copied from a pattern book, or a botched reconstruction of a cache of parts.

As I said in my first article, this feels like those early reconstructions of the Iguanodon, which famously put the spiked thumb on the nose.

If it’s a sheath, then the spike probably goes on the inside to secure it in place. It’s still a broach — a fibula — albeit a hellish one where the pin goes through some part of your dick.

I don’t think it can be secured by just the pin, though. First, since he wanted to hide his circumcision, Menophilus must have had a reasonable expectation of the sheath staying on without a piercing. Second, that hoop at the bottom of the image served some purpose.

My guess is that the hoop is a badly drawn base ring, familiar from modern chastity devices:

My reconstruction of a Roman male chastity device

That would explain what happened to Menophilus: he probably went into the cold plunge, his dick shrank, and came out the back.

Something like a modern chastity device would fit with what Quintilian (a Roman teacher, also 1st century) says about a humorous nickname given to “a certain Julius”:

for example Publius Blessius called a certain Julius, who was dark, lean and bent, the iron buckle (theca)
(source)

Dr Dingwall, the late Victorian antiquarian obsessed by chastity and infibulation, thinks “this is merely a reference to the curve of the ordinary buckle or safety-pin”. However, a chastity cage, especially for a long penis, is also bent over.

What holds this thing together?

The Romans were pretty hi-tech, but there’s never a mention of a key.

We do know that getting out of a fibula required an “artisan” (Martial, Epigram 14.215). Since installing a foreskin fibula required a doctor, it seems to me that Martial is referring to removing the theca or penis sheath type we’re talking about here.

Dingwall talks about something Juvenal wrote:

“The fibula of a comic actor is loosened by the women only at a great price,” or it is possible that the meaning of “ magno" may be “ with great trouble,” an interpretation which I do not think to be very probable.

(Dingwall)

Maybe “trouble” is the correct translation after all.

There are also lots of references to “loosening a fibula”.

Perhaps the Roman chastity device was a single-piece device, made in silver (Dingwall quoting Pliny) that was simply hammered closed. (More speculation in my first article.)

Poor Menophilus can’t get the thing off his balls while his dick flops about for all to see— imagine his humiliation!

But save your pity for Caelia’s slave. He has a piercing and can’t get that thing off his dick at all. Ever.

Which suggests what might have happened to Menophilus’ foreskin.

If you Google, you’ll find some scepticism in the male chastity community about whether a foreskin can be used to secure a device. You’ll also find plenty of PA devices, but nothing designed for foreskin piercings.

There’s also a problem that long-term chastity with a foreskin raises hygiene issues.

So, let’s assume that free men — especially youths — get the theca removed periodically removed for cleaning and checking.

What about slaves? That’s a lot of fuss to go through for a slave.

It would be entirely consistent for the Romans do to away with the foreskin and the fuss and instead secure the theca — the chastity device — with a PA hook.

Maybe Menophilus is a freedman and former sex slave, and that’s why he has no foreskin.

Which Romans wore male chastity devices and why?

According to Dr Eric Dingwall, our late Victorian expert on chastity and infibulation, the subjects of “infibulation” were: youths, boxers and wrestlers, slaves, and actors and other performers.

However, reading his evidence carefully, a better reconstruction might be…

Free and unfree men in the following categories:

1. Youths for their own good.

2. Performers including wrestlers to enhance performance especially voice.

3. Men who provided sexual services to women, supposedly to keep them horny.

These obviously intersect. Both a performer and an unfree youth can be a provider of sexual services.

In the case of youths and slaves, chastity was an imposition, whereas for the free performer or free male prostitute, it might be a professional decision. Likewise the free amateur performer or womaniser might also embrace chastity — which was maybe why Menophilus’s chastity device was only remarkable for what it hid, not for the fact of him wearing it.

The problem with “#3 Men who provided sexual services to women” is that we only have testimony from a snarky male poet.

Martial clearly suspects a sexual element:

Tell me candidly, fibula, what is it you do for comic actors and singers?
“Get them a higher price for their fucking”

Martial, Epigram 14.215 (Dingwall)

Also…

If, as this goes on, some young athlete comes your way, now freed from tutelage, whose swollen penis has been unpinned by the smith, you summon him with a nod and lead him off

Martial, Epigram 14.215 (Dingwall)

Continence makes you horny!

Bear in mind that this was before the invention of the vibrator. Defeating a theca would have been hard work involving probes, or maybe anal masturbation… and not everybody can get off that way.

Presumably that’s what Martial was getting at with respect to Caelia’s slave: She doesn’t mind seeing dicks, or she wouldn’t use the public baths. Her slave isn’t a singer. So the only reason for his sheath is to keep him horny.

However, this makes the very male-centric assumption that “horny = good”.

Why Roman Women Really Got Sexual Services from Men in Chastity Devices

Dr Dingwall, sweetly remarks:

Although it has been considered curious that infibulated persons should offer any attractions to lascivious women it seems fairly clear that … a man, having had the impediment removed, would be in a condition to satisfy the most imperious demands made upon him, an enforced period of probably unwilling abstinence having sharpened his sexual appetite… (Dingwall)

Clearly Dr Dingwall hasn’t seen this mosaic from the Women’s Baths in Pompeii:

Wikimedia

A Roman woman can most certainly seek satisfaction from a lover sealed into a male chastity device.

Why would she have recourse to male prostitutes and slaves in the first place?

Here we are in the fairly liberated 21st century West, and gigolos are thin on the ground compared to female sex workers. Why is 1st century Rome be different?

Boredom, mainly.

We’re talking women of leisure, and in the low-tech Roman world, leisure is ultimately boring unless you enjoy managing your investments, or are super rich and can always have several big vanity projects on the go. Failing that, there’s only passive entertainment, gossip or… sex, which generates its own drama.

The male prostitutes are probably also performers, so there’s the excitement of pursuit and courtship, maybe even competition for their favours. The slaves… well the slaves are handy when you are bored — nobody has invented the vibrator yet — but maybe it’s also fun to have one as a pet for a while and treat him as a lover.

The big selling point of male prostitutes and slaves have is that, unlike citizens of appropriate station, they can easily be dismissed and can’t pester or scheme to force you into a marriage. The reasoning is similar to modern high-powered men and their use of call girls.

This leaves the obvious problem that Romen women don’t want to get pregnant or be raped. That’s where the chastity device comes in. An infibulated man can’t get you pregnant and he can’t force you for his own gratification. (He can still assault you, but Roman society was geared to strongly discourage slaves from going down that route.)

There’s one other factor that may be overriding.

The Roman Chastity Device and the Bill Clinton Defence

Romans were obsessed by who was penetrating whom. For example, when it came to male homosexuality, it was OK to bugger a slave for fun, but not OK to bottom for another citizen, and certainly not take it up the arse from an actual slave.

When it came to women, it was not OK for a woman to have sex with somebody of lower status. At best, it could cause reputational problems, with downstream problems from family dealing with the embarrassment. At worst, it could pose legal difficulties.

If you were married and committed adultery with a slave, that could give your husband an excuse for a quicky divorce very much to your disadvantage. You might even end up being registered as a prostitute and lose citizenship rights.

Worse, if you were divorced or widowed, you could end up enslaved.

In AD57, pretty much at the start of the period for which we have all this evidence for male chastity devices, the Senate passed a law which meant that if a freewoman had an affair with your slave, except by special arrangement, she also became your slave (source) One might suspect what happens to her property....

Holy Sexual Entrapment, Batman!

If we weren’t already talking about the sexual exploitation of enslaved persons, that would be pretty morally repugnant, especially if you imagine a vulnerable widow seduced by the sexual equivalent of a hunter’s decoy. She might not even know she’s sleeping with a slave.

But what if you could demonstrate that sex was impossible because your supposed lover was infibulated?

If anybody suggested that tongue and fingers might have been involved — given how ignorant male Romans seem to have been about women’s sexuality, they might not even consider the possibility, or be too embarrassed to mention it — you could claim with a straight face that that was masturbation and didn’t count as sex.

“I did not have sexual relations with that man” remains technically true. It’s the Bill Clinton Defence.

This rather shifts male chastity from a quirky prophylactic to a necessity for any Roman woman who wanted to take a lower class lover — an athlete or singer — or keep a strapping youth as a sex slave.

Where’s the archaeological evidence?

We don’t have any archaelogical evidence for Roman male chastity devices.

However, we know infibulation was common and we don’t have any archaeological evidence for that either!

We do have Roman slave collars, but only a tiny percentage compared to the population of slaves. Likewise, punishment collars with messages — “Hold me or I will run” etc — must have been relatively common over the entire era, but only about 45 survive.

Roman chastity devices — thecas — were rare, and probably made of valuable metals like silver, so when they were no longer required they would be melted down. Maybe a handful do survive somewhere, but nobody knows what they are.

So, I hold my breath every time a new victim turns up at Pompeii. Will this one have hardware on his junk?

Main Sources

“Dingwall”: Male infibulation by Eric John Dingwall. Translations by Google.

“SMH”: Preputial infibulation: From ancient medicine to modern genital piercing by Schultheiss, Mattelaer and Hodges

For a sense of what this might have felt like….